Michelle Wolf speaks truth the DC media doesn’t want to hear

Michelle Wolf

Last night was the White House Correspondents’ Dinner, or as I prefer to think of it, the “saturnalia of incestuous ingratiation that does little to instill confidence in the public that the press isn’t ensorcelled by the powerful”. (Thank you, The Newsroom.) The only thing that ever came to mind when I heard the name was Stephen Colbert’s legendary shellacking of George W. Bush’s presidency and the mainstream media’s complicity, and how pricked that same media felt afterwards – comedians speaking truth to power is all fine and dandy, but how dare he do it to them?

Yesterday saw history repeat itself: Michelle Wolf, whom I know as an occasional correspondent on The Daily Show, took the stage and gave the Trump administration and its apologists, as well as the media that chose to elevate him rather than push back when it mattered in 2015–16, the talking-to they deserved. So naturally, the DC media is rounding on her, because the only comedy they apparently approve of is the kind that favors polite servility.

Adam Conover of Adam Ruins Everything is neither polite nor servile, and he takes to The New York Times to lay out some truth.

[I]n her performance at the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner on Saturday night in Washington, Michelle Wolf did exactly what a great comic is supposed to do. She made the crowd of assembled journalists, politicians and guests laugh; she made them squirm; and she made them gasp in astonishment (and yes, a little delight) when a sharp sliver of the truth cut a little closer to the bone than they were expecting.

In other words, she killed.

Yet in return for her excellence, Ms. Wolf was criticized not just by partisan defenders of the president, but by members of the press, too. Journalists called Ms. Wolf’s set “offensive,” “deplorable” and “a debacle.” Margaret Talev, the president of the White House Correspondents’ Association, who booked the comedian to perform, released a statement on Sunday night that said “unfortunately, the entertainer’s monologue was not in the spirit” of the group’s mission.

There is no president of the Comedians’ Association, and though Ms. Wolf and I know each other professionally, I’m not her spokesman. But at risk of speaking out of turn, I’d like to offer this official response from America’s comics: If you don’t want comedy, don’t hire us.

[…]

Contrary to what several prominent journalists said, the transcript shows that Michelle Wolf did not make a single joke at the expense of Sarah Huckabee Sanders’s physical appearance. Rather, she did something much worse in the eyes of those assembled: She ridiculed the White House press secretary’s mendacity, hypocrisy and complicity. And in a searing, brutally funny segment, she criticized the willingness of the press to play along:

“You guys are obsessed with Trump. Did you used to date him? Because you pretend like you hate him, but I think you love him. I think what no one in this room wants to admit is that Trump has helped all of you. He couldn’t sell steaks or vodka or water or college or ties or Eric, but he has helped you. He’s helped you sell your papers and your books and your TV. You helped create this monster, and now you’re profiting off of him. And if you’re gonna profit off of Trump, you should at least give him some money because he doesn’t have any.”

No wonder the crowd seemed so uncomfortable.

It amuses me how another frequent criticism of Wolf and Colbert’s style of tell-it-to-their-faces humor is that it generates few laughs from those present. Wolf knew full well that the people worth impressing weren’t the stooges in the room, but the colossally larger audience watching at home. I didn’t even find her routine all that funny, but it was made all the more hilarious by the reactions she got from the stilted crowd, especially when she tore into Sarah Huckabee Sanders, noted professional liar for the (alleged) sexual-assaulter-in-chief.

Hi. Sarah Huckabee Sanders lies to the press on Donald Trump's behalf for a living. It's not theoretically possible to say something to or about her that is too mean. If Michelle Wolf never told a joke and just spent 20 minutes trying to make her cry, it would have been fine.

— Steve Shives (@steve_shives) April 30, 2018

When did it become okay to be more offended by what someone with no power says than by what someone with power does?

— Neil deGrasse Tyson (@neiltyson) April 29, 2018

Watch Wolf’s full remarks below: